Read Novel Full Chapter 172 : The Batch That Went Back
Chapter 172 : The Batch That Went Back
March 27, morning. First-floor pharmacy window, inpatient building.
Yao Qian sat inside, a few unfilled prescriptions pinned under her hand. Her fingertips tapped the keyboard twice, paused. Shen Zhixia set her folder on the counter without opening it.
"I'm not here about your notebook today," she said. "One question about inventory: carbetocin injection, one-hundred-microgram ampoules. Any left in the pharmacy stock."
Yao Qian looked up, typed twice. A line of text scrolled across the screen.
"One left."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
"The batch number on the box—can I take a look? I won't touch it. You set it on the counter and I'll copy it."
Yao Qian pressed her hand against the counter, stood, and went through the white metal door at the back. When the door opened, plastic bins inside knocked together in a light rattle; someone was moving things on the shelf side. She came out holding a carton and placed it on the window counter, her palm resting on top.
The side facing her bore a small printed line. Batch number: 240517. Valid through March of next year. Place of origin, four characters: Hengyue Pharmaceutical.
She copied the six digits into her notebook, checked them, then checked them again.
In the Evidence Echo, the box had a crushed corner. This one on the counter had four sharp, even corners; not so much as a crease on the face of it.
"Last month, this spec—was a whole batch sent back?"
Yao Qian's hand drew back from the carton. She shifted it half an inch toward herself, then put it away behind the window.
"I can't say."
"I'm not asking you," Shen Zhixia said. "If stock gets returned, the storeroom has paperwork."
From behind the white metal door someone called "Xiao Yao," voice flat. Yao Qian lowered her head and typed. Half a minute later, the keyboard sounds stopped.
"If you want to ask about the storeroom," she said, "don't ask here."
On the bench in the corridor, she opened her notebook and wrote out the time, the window, the name, the exact words, line by line, and dated it. On the batch number line she wrote the six digits she'd verified against the box, then added a note: One unit currently in pharmacy stock, batch 240517—not the unit used on the day of the incident.
Qi Xiuyun pushed a medical records cart down the corridor. One wheel wasn't quite round; it creaked with every revolution. The cart stopped in front of her.
"The storeroom has been going through paperwork these past two days," Qi Xiuyun said, straightening the charts on top without looking up. "Going through the return slips. Two days straight."
"Who asked them to."
"I don't know." She smoothed a chart flat. "Xiao Yao's quieter than ever these last few days. Don't hold it against her. Last week she asked me what color lawyers wear to court."
"I'll remember that."
"Remember it or not, up to you." Qi Xiuyun nudged the cart forward half a step. "I need to get moving."
[Thud. The one on the shelf isn't the one they used.]
* * *
Evening. Four sheets of paper laid out on the long table at Zhengping. She took a pencil and drew three vertical lines across the top sheet's margin, dividing it into three columns.
Left column: Procurement and Acceptance Record. Under it she copied the line from the carbon copy—Carbetocin Injection, 100 mcg per ampoule, one ampoule, supplier Hengyue Pharmaceutical, batch number legible only in the first two digits: 23.
Middle column: Ledger Outbound Column. Under it she drew a diagonal slash, then left half a line of space beneath. Small note beside it: Paper surface abraded, faint blue residue, writing illegible.
Right column: Pharmacy Stock. Under it, six digits: 240517.
Three columns in a row. Numbers at both ends. The middle column empty.
He Xiufen came up with her tea mug, set it on the corner of the table, and stood watching for a while.
"Three places, supposedly the same drug," she said. "First one left half a number. Middle one, someone scraped it. Last one, that ampoule's still on the shelf. Tell me: is the one on the shelf the same batch as the one that went into a person's body on the twenty-seventh."
"No," she said. "The numbers don't match."
"That's the one new fact you got today." He Xiufen took the pencil from her hand and drew a circle above each of the three columns. "Before, what we'd pinned down was 'nobody acknowledged it going in, and somebody scraped it going out.' Today's column says: the stock on its own shelf doesn't match the numbers on its own paper."
"I looked up the gist of the regulations." She turned over another sheet. "When a medical institution buys drugs, it has to verify the supplier's qualifications and the drug's certificates of conformity. It has to keep genuine procurement and acceptance records, and those records must include the product name, spec, quantity, supplier, and batch number. The batch number has to be traceable from the manufacturer all the way through use. If the batch can't be traced, you can't trace which batch that one ampoule belonged to."
[Thud. Statute Quick Search: Procurement requires acceptance; batch numbers must be traceable.]
"A batch number is a drug's ID card," He Xiufen said. "They can't produce the purchase receipt for the batch they used, and they can't produce that batch's certificate of conformity. Which means they can't tell you whether that ampoule was a compliant ampoule or not. But don't ask them 'is there something wrong with the drug'—ask that, and they've got a hundred answers waiting. You ask only one thing: what was the batch number of the ampoule used on the twenty-seventh, and where is the receipt."
"What if they write down a number for me?"
"If they write down a number, you verify it." He Xiufen picked up her mug and blew on it. "Check it against the supply slip, the acceptance record, the current stock, the returns. Ask about the product, ask about the batch. Don't ask about people. People are here today and gone tomorrow. A batch number is printed on the box. It can't run away."
She spread out the Supplementary Evidence Collection Application and began writing. One: purchase receipts for the same batch number of the drug specification involved in this case. Two: current stock status of that specification. Three: recent return-to-warehouse and destruction records for that specification. Reason, in the blank line, the same as before: to determine the source and conformity of the drug involved in this case.
On the third line, she paused.
"Will the return item make it look like I'm reaching too far?"
"What was returned was the same specification." He Xiufen said. "If they'd returned glucose, I'd tell you to cross that line out."
Footsteps on the stairs. Peng Weidong came up in a washed-gray work uniform, ink staining the creases of his fingers. He stood in the doorway without coming farther in.
"Lawyer Shen, I'm on night shift, just passing by, saw the light on."
"Come in, sit."
"I won't." His eyes paused on the papers on the table, didn't understand them, didn't ask about them. "Just the one question, the same one—who gave the order to use it."
"That one has to wait," she said. "First ask about the product, then ask about the hand. Once the product's trail is established, someone will have no choice but to answer that."
Peng Weidong nodded.
"The baby cries at night. Has to be held to sleep," he said. "I just keep thinking, when he's older, I want to have a piece of paper to show him."
"There will be."
He went back down. His footsteps on the stairs thudded all the way to the bottom.
She pulled out her phone. The message at the top of the list was still there: That half-sentence, I'll write it myself. She opened it. The cursor blinked twice in the input field. She backed out.
[Thud. They have to state clearly, first, which batch that ampoule came from.]
* * *
The morning of the twenty-eighth, she filed the application with the First Civil Division. The clerk flipped through two pages: "This one—we just checked it on the twenty-fifth."
"Three lines added today."
The presiding judge came out, spread the three-column table on the windowsill, and tapped a finger across the three boxes.
"Three places. One where only the first two digits are legible. One scraped off. One still sitting on a shelf." He set the paper down. "On the first two, I'll issue letters: current stock status for that specification, and recent return and destruction records. On the second, I won't write—the purchase receipts for that batch, I'll directly order the defendant to produce them. Within five days."
"Can I add one thing," she said. "Make them put the batch number of the ampoule used on the twenty-seventh in writing."
The presiding judge tapped his pen against the corner of the paper.
"Keep the request small and they'll have an easier time answering," he said. "The letter will read: within five days, explain in writing the batch number of the drug involved in this case, and submit the purchase receipt for that batch."
[Thud. Make them put a number on paper themselves.]
* * *
March 29, 9:00 a.m. Third-floor file reading room at the courthouse. The same long table, four chairs, two kraft paper envelopes—one tied with string, one with a rubber band.
Director Xu arrived before her. Jacket, sleeves rolled up to his forearms. The clerk opened the envelopes and announced the contents: one page, Drug Stock Status. One slip, Return to Warehouse.
First, the Drug Stock Status. A table dated March 29, item after item by name. Carbetocin injection, 100 mcg per ampoule. One unit in stock. Batch 240517. Matching the six digits she'd verified at the window against the box. Not a single digit off.
Then the return slip.
March 22. Carbetocin injection, 100 mcg per ampoule. Two ampoules. Batch 230915. Returned to supplier: Hengyue Pharmaceutical.
Reason for return: blank. Handler: one signature. Reviewer: blank.
230915. First two digits: 23.
She turned up the procurement and acceptance record and laid it next to the return slip. The two blurred digits from the carbon copy lay right in front of her—23, exactly. The four after them, she was seeing for the first time, complete.
"This sequence belongs to that ampoule," she said.
"The return is a different batch," Director Xu said.
"Same first two digits as the one that was used."
"Plenty of batches share the first two digits."
"Then please write down the batch number of the ampoule used on the twenty-seventh." She pushed the pen toward him, nib pointing his way. "Pen's here. Paper's right by your hand."
Director Xu's hand didn't move.
"I can't write down the pharmacy's records."
"You said you'd go back and check. What day is it now."
"Some things can't be written down until they've been clarified."
She smoothed the slip flat and pointed it out for the clerk: reason for return blank, reviewer blank, only a single handler's name on the page. She counted out the three blanks, reading each one aloud. The clerk wrote a line in the margin: Defendant failed to state the batch number of the drug involved in this case.
She read the slip through once more from the top, and caught something she'd missed.
December 26: the procurement and acceptance record showed one ampoule received. March 22: two ampoules returned. Same product name. First two digits matched. One in. Two out.
"Where did the extra ampoule come from."
"The pharmacy's books aren't the Medical Affairs Office's to keep," Director Xu said. "I'll have to check that as well."
"Then leave that blank too." She slid the slip back toward him. "I'll record every blank, one by one."
The return slip had a date but no time. She added a line in her notebook: Returned March 22, no time recorded.
[Thud. The batch that went back—the date was one day after her price inquiry.]
March 22. That morning she'd filed the application at the First Civil Division, and the clerk had her sign the receipt stub. The day before was the twenty-first. She had stood at the pharmacy window and asked only one question. The price.
* * *
That night, the smell of scallion oil drifted up the stairwell from downstairs. She sat down to draft the Written Objection and wrote "cannot explain" four times in a row. He Xiufen knocked three of them out with the end of a pen.
"Write one word four times and the judge stops reading by the third," He Xiufen said. "Put the numbers down. Let him see for himself."
The final draft kept this passage:
The defendant's drug in-out ledger, procurement and acceptance record, pharmacy stock status, and return-to-warehouse slip are inconsistent in three places regarding the batch number of the carbetocin injection involved in this case: the batch number recorded in the procurement and acceptance record is legible only in its first two digits; the batch number field in the ledger's outbound column has been altered, and the original writing is illegible; the drug currently in stock bears a different batch number. To date, the defendant has provided no written explanation of the batch number of the drug actually used in this case.
Further: the procurement and acceptance record shows one ampoule received on December 26; the return slip shows two ampoules returned on March 22. The quantities also do not match.
She finished copying, clipped the three photocopies into the folder in order. Three numbers laid out—23, the scraped-empty box, 240517. Only one of the three was complete, and it stood at the bottom of the "returned" column.
She closed the folder and reached over to flip the desk calendar to March. The circle He Xiufen had drawn on the thirty-first was still there. Someone had traced over it again.